Michael Jecks - City of Fiends

Alice had always been a pale girl, and naked in death Emma thought she looked like a figure carved from marble.

On her pure flesh the stains of blood about the two elongated diamond-shaped stab wounds stood out clearly, as did the discolouration of dead flesh where her body had lain. About her wounds, the blood had dried black, and flaked off as a powder. But other signs stood out on her body: Emma could see the marks, one on the left side of her throat, another pair on her breasts. Not bites with teeth, but the marks of love. Sucking kisses that had drawn the blood to the surface of her skin like large bruises. Seeing them, Emma knew what the girl had been doing earlier on the day she died, as did all the other adults there.

Baldwin stared thoughtfully at Alice’s body. He looked like a man peering at accounts in a ledger, not at a dead maid.

‘Do you object to my studying her?’ he asked the Coroner. ‘I have been asked specifically by the Precentor of the Cathedral to aid you as I may.’

‘Sir Baldwin? My apologies, please, do take all the time you need. I know of your reputation, sir.’

‘I am grateful,’ Baldwin said as he crouched by the body. ‘The two stab wounds are quite clear,’ he went on. ‘Both were from the same blade. It is a blade some one and one half inches broad, and it is less than eight inches long. The blade appears to have penetrated to its full depth.’

‘How do you know that?’ the Coroner asked. Emma thought he looked baffled.

‘The cross of the guard has slammed into the girl’s flesh here, over the breast, and bruised it. Yet it did not pass through her body to her back, so it cannot be as long as her body is deep. If I insert a finger . . .’ Baldwin stuck his finger into the wound. ‘Yes, it passes down slightly, but not steeply. So the knife-blade is longer than my finger. It was no eating-knife, but a dagger with two edges. The wounds are clearly diamond-shaped, and they penetrated the tunic which she wore.’

‘I see,’ the Coroner said, and Emma saw that the clerk was scribbling quickly as he tried to note all Sir Baldwin’s comments.

Baldwin considered, wiping his finger on a fold of her skirts. ‘She made love not long before her death. These marks on her body,’ he pointed out the bruises Emma had noticed on the neck and breast, ‘these are not the marks of a rapist.’

Sir Reginald’s clerk was unconvinced. ‘A rapist driven by his lust may have brought her here for himself and made those marks on her body, and afterwards she pulled her clothes on in modesty before he slew her. Men in the heat of their passions can be brutal.’

‘You suggest that the rapist stood by as she donned her clothes, and then slew her? The stabs were through the material of her chemise, so she was clad when killed.’

The Coroner was nodding, as though impressed with the logic of Baldwin’s reasoning, but Emma guessed that professional awe was tempered with irritation at being shown up before the jury.

‘Consider this,’ Baldwin said, holding Alice’s head and studying her. ‘I am sure you noticed this, Coroner: her lips are bruised. One may think she was grasped there, to prevent her calling out? But there are no finger-marks at either cheek. If I saw a maid silenced in such a manner, I would expect four bruises on one cheek and jaw, and the thumb-mark correspondingly on the other, but there is no such mark here. Which is peculiar.’

‘What else would bruise her mouth?’ Sir Reginald asked.

‘Her teeth are firmly fixed. It was not a punch,’ Baldwin explained. ‘But now I have seen her body, an explanation is to hand. If she was kissed violently, passionately, that would possibly lead to her mouth being bruised. So this lover was an ardent fellow.’

‘But you don’t think she was raped,’ the clerk said.

‘With a pretty maid like this, I would always look for signs of a rape,’ Baldwin agreed, ‘but she had recently lain with her lover, so how could we tell whether she was raped afterwards?’

He stood, and pulled her arm to roll her gently over onto her stomach. Her back was smooth and unblemished, except for the staining where blood had pooled.

‘There is no evidence of a blow, a slap or punch, to her face,’ Baldwin said. He stared down the length of the figure. ‘I should have expected that, if she had tried to fight off an assault. And obviously she was not raped here in the alley.’

‘Why not?’ the Coroner asked.

‘Her back,’ Baldwin said, ‘is not marked. Consider: if she were forced to lie among the stones and filth of the alley, she would have abrasions, and her clothing would be stained from the dirt. There are no such indications, so I doubt that she was raped out here. That does not mean she was not raped somewhere else, perhaps on a comfortable bed, but not here.’

‘I don’t understand – why would someone kill her and dump her body here?’

‘To distract a Coroner, to conceal the killer’s identity, or to avoid paying fines. Wherever a body is found, that community will pay the fines for infringement of the King’s Peace. If it were moved, someone else would have to pay.’

‘Well, since there are none of those signs, perhaps she was not raped, but merely killed there in the alley,’ the Coroner concluded.

‘For what reason?’ Baldwin asked, rifling through the pile of her discarded clothes.

‘Robbery,’ said the clerk.

Baldwin looked at him. ‘This was a maidservant, not a merchant. Would a cut-purse think her likely to wear a gold necklace, or hold a well-filled purse?’

‘What do you think, then?’

Baldwin had picked up her chemise, and was studying it closely.

‘There is no way to tell, as yet. Perhaps we shall learn more when we hear what she was doing on the day she died.’

Rougemont Castle

He had been in a good mood that morning. Sir James de Cockington, the Sheriff of Exeter, had been entertained by a young woman from the local tavern, and her skills and athletic ability had first delighted, and then alarmed him. He had woken to a mild headache and that inevitable fuzziness that comes from a lack of sleep, and the wench was gone – without robbing him, he noted.

He made his way down to his hall, and called for food and drink, considering his future. It was uncertain.

Only a few weeks ago he’d thought he must lose his position here. The new regime would not appreciate his efforts on behalf of Sir Edward of Caernarfon, and he was as aware as any that his post would be a perfect gift to many of those who had spent the years trying to unseat the King. This position of Sheriff of Devon was a ripe plum ready to fall into any hands which had been supportive of the barons opposed to Sir Edward.

But nothing had happened.

Sir James reckoned that at first there had been too much going on around Bristol and Wales, let alone London, for those in charge to worry about him. King Edward III was still not yet fifteen, and the land was controlled by the council of the leading barons of the country. And behind all there stood that wily dog, Sir Roger Mortimer.

He was the real power in the land. That was clear enough to any man with a brain. And Sir James had a particularly astute mind when it came to seeing where was the safest haven in troubled times. He hadn’t got to be a Sheriff without understanding the details of politics.

Hearing that Sir Baldwin was waiting in his antechamber had sent him into a minor paroxysm of panic. Last time he had met Sir Baldwin, he had not enjoyed the experience.

Then a thought took him, and it was a happy thought.

Sir Baldwin, whom he had always considered a grumpy example of a rustic knight, had always appeared to consider himself the equal of Sir James. More, in fact: Sir James felt sure Sir Baldwin looked down upon him. Well, times had changed now, hadn’t they? Sir Baldwin’s influence at court was ended. He had been loyal to the old King, to Sir Edward of Caernarfon. And now that King was gone, and in his place was the council and the new King. Sir Baldwin’s position was built on sand – while Sir James was held in some esteem by the new government, clearly, because he was still in post.